Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Congratulations, Explanations, Rejuvenation and Reevaluation

First off, many people may have come here by Googling "Illini" since the football team's outstanding, upset win last Saturday over Ohio State. I know I would be confused if I landed here and found this site when I was looking for football.

Let me say, welcome anyway and hope you stay. Let me also say congratulations to the team. I don't follow college football much. It is too complicated and I only went to one game while I was at Illinois (because ROTC required that I go and sell soda for a fundraiser). I was busy on Saturday afternoons with the other, original form of football, RUGBY.

That said, this is not an American Football site, nor is it a fan site for Fighting Illini teams per se.

This brings me to the real topic of today's post, Reevaluation and Rejuvenation.

I saw a show on History International the other night called "Band of Bloggers." It was about bloggers in Iraq and it made me think about my blog.

This blog will be two years old next January and I've had less than three thousand visitors in that time. I'd like to get more traffic, regular commenters and basically an audience for my writing (my fiction or my blogging or both).

In the past two years the blog has changed emphasis a couple of times and none of those changes seemed to garner any more traffic.

This has been over a month of one of the most steady times I have had for daily postings in the history of Illini6. This means that I have the commitment and the drive right now to make a change for the better.

I want to take a more systematic approach this time to evaluate the shape, image and content of this blog. I have requested blogging books from the library, and I have taken the plunge to redesign the look of the blog. I hope you like it.

A new feature available through Blogger is the poll on the upper left. I intend to use the poll quite often now so that is one definite change.

Please take the poll and let me know what you are interested in seeing and participating in on this blog. You can choose more than one thing.

Welcome to Illini 6

While deployed in Afghanistan I chose as my radio call sign, Illini6. 6 denoting commander and Illini in honor of my Alma Mater.

This blog is a place to share and enjoy the writings and rantings of the Inner Prop.

Inner Prop was a nickname given to me because in times of stress I call upon my inner prop (Prop is in reference to the Rugy Union position of Prop Forward). The inner prop is like the inner child, only more violent.